


They were kids that I once knew

by NotMyOrthonym



Series: Whitestone, Dead Hearts [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: I just thought they'd have interesting conversations, My First Work in This Fandom, cause they've both been manipulated?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-22 06:23:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8275930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotMyOrthonym/pseuds/NotMyOrthonym
Summary: Cassandra and Kynan reach some kind of understanding.





	1. Chapter 1

He’s just finished his second day of training with Jarett when she approaches him. Jarett’s just gone, off to drink with some friends, when she slides out of the shadows of a nearby building and walks towards him. It’s timed well enough that she must have planned it, but she makes herself known from far enough away that he has time to run if he wants to. She probably planned that too. 

He doesn’t run. He stays seated on a bench near the training grounds, working on stripping off some of the leather armor he’s wearing. If she attacks him, he won’t fight back, he decides. He’s ready for whatever punishment she’ll deal out. He deserves it, after all.

She doesn’t attack him. She approaches at a steady pace, eyes on him all the while, and then gently seats herself at the other end of the bench. He risks a glance towards her and sees that she’s turned her face towards the rest of the city now. The light makes her look younger, although, to be fair, he has no idea how old she is. She looks too young for the streaks of grey in her hair, but he knows very little about her. All he really knows is that she apparently rules this city and he helped kill her brother. He waits for her to talk.

She’s heard the whole story from Percy, when she sat him down and made him talk to her. She’s unsure if she’s glad she didn’t have to actually see him dead or if she’s upset that they hadn’t gotten her sooner. Clearly Vox Machina succeeded in their resurrection alone, but there’s still this feeling, this tight knot under her collarbone, that makes her think she could have done better. She could have helped. She could have brought him back, if they didn’t keep locking her out of everything. 

She waited until they’d left again, to go do something dangerous and deadly when Percy had barely recovered from the last dangerous and deadly thing they’d done. For all she knew, he still wasn’t recovered. He’d been dead two days ago and now he was fighting a dragon. He’d barely had time to say goodbye. But at least it had allowed her to have this conversation sooner rather than later. 

She looks over at him and almost smiles. She can read the tension in every line of his body as he stubbornly strips off sweat soaked armor. He looks ready for an attack, she thinks. She notes the dark circles under his eyes and the tense line of his jaw. Yes, it is much better to have this conversation sooner. 

“I knew her, you know,” she says, gaze still focused on him. “Ripley.” She watches as he flinches at the name. His movements slow as he almost curls inward upon himself. “I’ve heard the whole story, or as much as Percy remembers.” She watches him for a long moment, still half curled up on the bench. His body keeps tensing and untensing, like he’s waiting for a blow any second. “You helped her kill him.”

“Yes.” The reply, when it comes after another long pause, is ragged. 

“Why?” she asks, hands clenched together between her knees.

“She lied to me, and I believed her,” is all he can say. He knows it’s a weak excuse. 

Percy had told her that. He’d heard it from the others, not firsthand, but he was perfectly willing to believe that Ripley had manipulated this … this child. “I could hate you for that,” she says, voice soft but hands still gripping one another. “Except … I understand.” She turns away from him, eyes closing against the images that assault her. “I know what it feels like to be manipulated.”

He can’t help but scoff at that, a small, bitter laugh escaping him. “I killed your brother. Of course you hate me.”

“I nearly killed him too, once,” she says. He turns to look at her then, surprised, and he sees the way she carries her tension, her white knuckled hands clenched together, her eyes shut and her brow furrowed. 

“How?” he asks, softer now. 

She’s never talked about this with anyone. Vox Machina never brought it up again, and it isn’t exactly the kind of thing that you just tell people. The few that know some of her particular relationship with the Briarwoods don’t exactly ask about it, and she can’t tell those who don’t know. If the wrong people found out, Whitestone could crumble. “I left him to drown in acid. Him and most of Vox Machina.”

“Why?”

Her smile is as bitter as his laugh. “Because some very clever and cruel people convinced me that his abandonment was worse than their crimes against my family.”

He feels some tension in his gut release ever so slightly. “She – she made me think that they brought the dragons. That everything that happened, all those people who died, it was all their fault.”

She opens her eyes again now, staring out at the city once more. “That sounds like her.”

He finds himself nodding ever so slightly. “You knew her, you said.”

“She lived here for five years,” she says, focusing her gaze on him again, seeing him stare back for the first time this whole conversation. “I know exactly what she is – was capable of.”

He sees the understanding in her face, sees the shared pain, and he can’t help but ask, “Does it ever get better? Do you ever forgive yourself?”

“It gets better. And it gets worse.” She’s resolved to be honest with this kid. “There are days when you can almost forget what you did. And there are days when it is all you think about. And, most importantly, there are days where it doesn’t matter.” She makes sure to hold his gaze as she repeats what she has been telling herself for months. “You are more than your worst mistake, Kynan. We all are.”

He swallows down a lump in his throat. “Do you ever forgive yourself?” he repeats, and she looks at him and sees how young he is and her heart breaks for him. 

“I’ll tell you if I ever find out,” she says, and her smile as she says it is wry and sad and bitter. 

He blinks back the water in his eyes. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

There’s a long moment where they just stare at one another. Cassandra stares down this _kid_ and thinks about how young he is and how thoroughly Ripley destroyed him and how someone, anyone, ought to protect kids from that. Kynan looks at this woman, hair grey before her time, and sees again that depth of understanding, of empathy rather than sympathy, of shared scars, the _understanding_ that even Vax’ildan had lacked.

“Thank you,” he says, eventually. “Thank you.”

“You’ll need someone to talk to,” she says, breaking eye contact to retreat to the safer view of the city, to avoid the emotions in his gaze. She doesn’t know if she’s really forgiven him yet. She _understands_ , but there is that knot under her collarbone that reminds her that it was only two days ago that Percy was dead. There is shared trauma between them, but that does not resolve all problems. But, at the same time, she feels this need to be there for the kid. Because – because _someone should be_ , and she’s the only one stepping up. Because there was no one there for her. “On the bad days, you’ll need someone to talk to. And there will be bad days.” She stands up now, turning slightly towards him. She avoids the gaze of his upturned face, avoids the tears shining in his eyes. “I’m in the castle, mostly, but just ask around and you should be able to find me.” She offers him a hand. “Promise me. Promise me that you’ll come find me.”

He blinks and swallows a few times, before taking her hand and accepting her help up. “I promise.”

She nods once, sharply. “Good.” She releases his hand and turns back towards the city. She takes a few steps away from him before –

“Wait!” The kid steps towards her. “You can talk to me, too, if you want. I don’t know much but,” he shrugs, a little helplessly, “you look like maybe you could use someone to talk to, too, sometimes.” He ends mumbling, scratching the back of his neck with one hand.

Her heart clenches again, because he is so _young_ and he doesn’t understand _anything_. Because she’s still angry at him, but she’s determined to help, too. Because she wouldn’t even know how to begin talking to someone about all the things that have glued her mouth shut, all the memories that steal her voice away from herself. She wonders how much Percy has told Vox Machina about what he went through before he escaped. She wonders if he ever thinks to ask about what she’s been through. She wonders if she’ll ever tell him about those years she was left alone. 

She keeps walking towards the city. “Maybe someday, kid,” she calls back to him. “Maybe someday.”

Kyan watches her go, watches the tension in her shoulders as he feels that knot in his gut untwist slightly more. He feels lighter as he sets about gathering up his armor and taking it home to clean. It’s not that the guilt is gone, or the self-hatred, but there’s some peace in knowing that – that he’s not alone in this. That someone at least understands. He doesn’t know why, but – it makes the whole thing easier to bear. At least for now. 

At least for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just thought Cassandra and Kynan might have some interesting things to say about manipulation. Also it's kind of weird they never addressed that whole "tried to drown you in acid" thing again. And they both need someone to talk to. Anyway, might make this into a series about the people left behind in Whitestone, whaddya think?


	2. Did they follow you to town?

The thing is, no one’s ever _wanted_ to talk to him about these things before. 

It’s what drew him to Ripley, he realizes. Ripley _wanted_ to talk to him about his great calling, about his future. Not towards the end, not when she had him firmly on her side, but at the beginning. She would _listen_ to him. She would _listen_ as he tentatively told her of his dreams, of his plans, of everything he wanted to become. He knows, now, that she was just manipulating him. That she was gathering information, figuring him out, figuring out the best way to use him against Vox Machina, against Percy in particular. He knows that. He fully comprehends that. 

But still. She was the first one to really _listen_ to him. 

Those days after Percy fell, after he knocked down Keyleth first, he thought maybe he would never talk like that again. He thought maybe it would be best to close off, to seal up, to never let anyone manipulate him like that again. To never give away what was in his head again. Because the moment you gave that away was the moment that someone could turn your own thoughts against you. 

And then Cassandra just wordlessly _understood_. There was a depth of understanding there that words _couldn’t_ express. And he realized he was not he first to try to glue up his mouth. And here was someone who _knew_ , and who was telling him not to. Who was telling him to _talk_.

Ripley had wanted to talk to him about his great future. About all those dreams he had. Cassandra wanted to talk to him about his nightmares. 

His bad days, his darkest thoughts, that’s what Cassandra made him promise to talk about. That’s what Cassandra wouldn’t let him keep locked up in his own head. That’s what she _wanted_ him to talk about. 

Even Vax’ildan had not offered council. He’d offered redemption, in his own way. But he hadn’t asked Kynan to _speak_. He didn’t want to _listen_ to Kynan. 

And he understood, really, he did. Who wants to talk to someone about how and why they tried to kill you? Who would believe that reasoning? Who wouldn’t treat it as something – something infuriating? That this – this _child_ had been so easily led, so easily tricked and manipulated, had been so stupid and trusting and naïve and _moronic_ to believe someone like _Ripley_ , and that it had nearly taken two or more members of his – of his _family_ , he calls them his _family_ , away. 

Kynan wouldn’t want to listen either, if he were Vax’ildan. 

But Cassandra – Cassandra _did_. 

Cassandra _understood_.

She’d been tricked too. Not by Ripley, but by people Ripley knew. 

He’d nearly taken her brother away for good and still she offered to hear him. Still she offered to listen. To let him unglue his tongue and let the darkest thoughts, the worst aspects of himself, free. 

He watchs her carefully, the next day, when he goes with Jarett to report troop movements and training progress. He watches the formal way she carries herself, the carefully guarded face, the noble air she exudes. He wonders how many know of her betrayal. He wonders what it cost her to tell him of it. 

Because, the thing is, if she hadn’t _offered_ , he would have stopped talking, he thinks. He would have let himself close off. He’d felt it happening, felt himself retreating. He’d remembered times with his father, when all there was was to close yourself off from the world, hide from what your life was. He’d hidden himself in dreams and stories of heroes, and then later in stories of Vox Machina. Vox Machina who had never _listened_ to him, who had never _heard_ him, who had knocked him out and sent him on his way and never really _understood_. Vox Machina who couldn’t stay still in one place long enough to listen to anyone except themselves. 

He would have closed himself up, he thinks, if she hadn’t offered to listen. 

And he wonders if anyone offered to listen to her. He wonders if anyone had even thought to. He wonders if she’s already closed herself up the way he might’ve. 

The thing about dark thoughts is they don’t just fade away. If you don’t let them out somehow, they stay and fester and _rot_.

Maybe that’s why he approaches her so soon after. Because it’s only been a few days, and it’s not necessarily a _bad_ day, but he’s got so many rotting thoughts in his head already. 

He finds her in a reading room in the castle, directed there by guards who assume he’s bringing a message from Jarett. He knocks lightly on the doorframe to get her attention. She glances up before marking her place in her book and setting it aside. “Close the door,” she says, as she gestures to a seat across from her. 

He shuts the door tightly behind him, wanting no one to overhear this. He wouldn’t tell others this, but she _asked_. He gets the feeling she already knows all the terrible things he could be thinking. He gets the feeling she’s thought more and worse and she will _let_ him think these things. She won’t condemn him for it. 

He seats himself carefully across from her, the furniture clearly quite old and valuable and he doesn’t want to face the consequences of breaking it. Fingers picking at the edges of his sleeves, pulling them up and over most of his hands, he keeps his face carefully down towards the ground as he asks, “I know – she lied to me, but still I – is it okay to hate them?” Because he does. He does hate them, still, somehow.

“Do you act on it?” is all she asks, voice carefully soft. 

“No. No, I don’t, but,“ he swallows, searching for the words, “but I still – people talk about them in the town, talk about the great heroes that will save them, and all I can think is – all I can think is – …” He can’t get the words out, somehow. They stick, rotting and vile, just at the back of his throat, gluing up his voice. 

“All you can think is, they didn’t save me,” she says. He looks at her then, meets her eyes. Her line of sight is focused on him, but her face is hazy, her gaze is not quite focused, and there’s something else, something in her past, he _knows_ , he just _knows_ , something she’s reliving in the same way he is. Something she relives every day, the same way he does. 

“Which is stupid,” he makes himself say. “They did save me. I’m here. They saved me from – her. Myself. Whatever.”

She’s got that bitter smile, the one that breaks through her careful control, the one that rings of _truth_ and _understanding_ , the _dark_ look that he finds oddly comforting. Because – because she’s _good_ , but she still looks like that. “Not soon enough, though,” she says through the bitter smile. “They didn’t save you soon enough.”

“Yeah,” he says, nodding slightly. “Yeah. I mean – they were – there were other things, more important things – It’s stupid. To resent them. It’s stupid.”

She nods now, her gaze back solidly on him. “Yes. It’s stupid.” He bites his cheek, trying to drag the emotion back down. “But it’s how you feel. You’re allowed to feel stupid things, Kynan.”

“I hate them for it,” he says, finally. “I hate them for abandoning me like that. I hate them for leaving me vulnerable to her and then – and then _blaming_ me for it. I hate them because they don’t even see the role they played in all this, they don’t even fucking _acknowledge_ the way their actions shaped this, shaped _me_ , shaped _my life_ ,” he draws in a deep breath here, a little ragged and desperate and blinking back tears _again_ , “and I – I hate her, too, I do, really, but – but sometimes I _don’t_.” His voice drops to whisper at the end, finally admitting the worst part, he thinks. “Sometimes I hate them more than her.” He finds himself curling inward again, crossing his arms over his torso, protecting himself from – from whatever comes next. 

“Kynan,” Cassandra says, voice commanding, “look at me.” It takes him a long moment, but he forces his gaze up. She’ll be disgusted, he knows. She must be. He would be. But when he finally looks at her, not quite making eye contact but looking at her face, he sees only some strident emotion he can’t quite understand. “She had a strong hold on you, Kynan. She had months of – and I’m just guessing here – convincing you that she was your friend. Maybe your best friend. The only one you could trust. The only one who truly saw you, truly understood you. Right?”

He remembers long conversations with her, with _Ripley_ , around a fire as they trekked across Tal’dorei together. He remembers her helping him train, promising him that she could help him reach the heights he so desperately desired. He remembers her quiet praise, her approving looks whenever he got something particularly right. No one had ever _encouraged_ him like that before. No one had told him that he had the potential he thought he did. He knows, he _knows_ that it was all manipulation, but there is a part of him that – that hasn’t let go of her yet. 

“That’s okay,” Cassandra continues when she sees the kid begin to cry. “It’s okay. You don’t have to hate her all at once. As long as you keep a grasp of the facts, as long as you know what really happened, as long as you don’t act on it, you can feel however you feel. You can feel stupid things, things that you know intellectually are wrong, but you can still _feel_ them. You have to. These things don’t just disappear, Kynan. You have to work through them, you have to acknowledge how you feel and move from there. It’s okay not to hate her, Kynan.”

“You hate her,” he points out, roughly swiping at his face with his sleeve. “They hate her. Everyone hates her. I should hate her. She was a terrible person.”

“I didn’t have the relationship with her you did. Neither did they. And she made you think she was a good person. All that – it doesn’t just go away once you know the truth.” She offers him a handkerchief. He takes it. It’s trimmed with lace and embroidered and smells like some expensive perfume. He feels bad using it to clean up his snot, but she doesn’t seem bothered.

“When does it go away?” he asks, trying to get himself under control. He doesn’t want to feel like this. He doesn’t want to have to hate himself for feeling this way. 

There’s the bitter smile again, and somehow he feels better. He feels better knowing he’s not the only terrible person in the room. “It’s like everything else. It comes and it goes. And one day, it goes more than it comes. It begins to fade. Your grip on reality, on the truth, gets stronger. You remember all the bad things, too, not just the good moments. You remember the manipulation. You see it for what it was.”

“Is that what it was like for you?” he can’t help but ask. “Did – were you used, too?”

He sees it, in that moment. He sees the rotting, festering things that glue her throat shut. He sees that no one came for her in time. No one was there to _listen_ , he realizes. And she glued herself in. 

“Yes,” she says, after a long moment, but there’s something off about it. Something wrong, something she _can’t_ tell him. He doesn’t know what to say to her. He doesn’t know what to do. “Yes, that’s what it was like.”

They sit across from one another, not really looking at the other, for a long time. He can hear a clock ticking somewhere in the room, but it must be behind him. Eventually, the silence is broken by a sniff from him as his nose tries to drip again. 

“So it’s okay to hate them?” he asks, his voice small again. 

“It’s unavoidable,” she answers back immediately. “And understandable. And – it doesn’t make you a bad person, Kynan. It doesn’t make you a bad person.”

“Even though I think bad things?” 

“Worthy people have bad thoughts. What matters is what you _do_ , not what you think.” There’s a strong emotion behind that that he’s not emotionally prepared to parse. He gets the feeling that as much as she understands him, maybe he doesn’t understand her the way he’d maybe like to. She waited too long, he thinks. No one came to save her and she locked herself away. 

But she came to save him. She knows what it is to be left on your own with these thoughts, and she didn’t let that happen to him. She came to save him. 

“Thank you,” he says, again, and he’ll probably say that to her many, many times. He may never stop thanking her. Thanking her for _listening_ , for _understanding_ , for _saving_ him. For saving him in time. 

She just nods and gestures for him to return her handkerchief. He does so, a little gingerly because it’s full of snot, and she sets it on the antique table, and he hopes it doesn’t ruin that. A little awkwardly, he stands to go. He’s just at the door, reaching for the doorknob, when he stops and turns back to her. “If you ever need – want, if you ever _want_ to talk …” He doesn’t quite finish, just lets it hang there. 

“Maybe someday, kid,” she says again, the exact same thing she said before. “Maybe someday.”

He bites his lip, then nods and opens the door. He leaves her, but as he goes, he swears to himself that, someday, when she wants to be saved, he will make sure that she gets saved too. The way she’s saved him from himself, he’ll make sure someone, if not him, saves her. Because it’s only been a few days and he’s already practically drowning in half-rotting thoughts. He can’t imagine how long it’s been since she had a breath of fresh air. 

 

She doesn’t go down immediately after the kid leaves. That would be too suspicious, she knows. She waits another half hour before she heads down, down to the room where _she_ died. Down to the spot where Delilah died. 

She stands above it for a moment. She relives the moment she stabbed Lady Briarwood. The moment she avenged her parents’ deaths. Her brothers’ deaths. The deaths of countless people from Whitestone. 

The moment she killed the woman who adopted her. The woman whose name she chose to take. The woman who acted almost motherly towards her at times. 

Allura and Gilmore and Ryndarien haven’t had time to come down and observe the Orb in weeks. She knows very few traverse these tunnels now. So she feels safe giving herself a moment or two here. She sits in the spot where _she_ sat. She rests there, just for a few moments, and lets herself _feel_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is like not a chapter fic? But I feel like making a new fic every time I want to write about Cassandra and Kynan is stupid, so I'll just add all the sort of interconnected one-shots about them to this fic, I guess.


End file.
